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Southern University official has been with Cooperative Extension for 50 years

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As the Cooperative Extension service celebrates 100 years, the LSU Agricultural Center is recognizing Leodrey Williams, who has been working with Southern University, LSU and serving at the national level as it relates to extension. (Olivia McClure)

Leodrey Williams, chancellor of Southern University Agricultural Research and Extension Center, has been working for the Louisiana Cooperative Extension Service, for 50 years, half the time the Cooperative Extension has been in existence, according to a news release from the LSU Agricultural Center.

In 1914, the passage of the Smith-Lever Act, created a partnership between agricultural colleges and the United States Department of Agriculture in efforts to support agricultural extension work.

Extension work in Louisiana had only took place through LSU but in 1971, Southern University created its own extension office.

Williams was hired as an agriculture specialist.Five years later, Williams went LSU to serve as associate state agent, director of Equal Employment Opportunity and associate professor in the Department of Extension and International Education, positions he held for four years. In 1980, Wilson became extension director at Southern University.Soon after, Williams would serve as the national director of the Cooperative Extension Service, making him responsible for funding extension programs of 104 land-grant universities around the country.

Williams would return to SU to take on his previous role on extension director in 1995.

Then, in 2001 Williams was asked to head the newly-formed Southern University Agricultural Research and Extension Center, in which he has been the center's only chancellor.

"No matter what you do, whether it's in community development, if it's in small business development, it's enhancing the socioeconomic quality of life for people," Williams said in statement. "You have more people now than you had 100 years ago. As long as there are people with problems, there will be a need for extension."